OCHER

Professor Anna Lindström at Uppsala university, Sweden, has been confirmed as speaker for the OCHER Conference at Thon Hotel Triaden, January 13-15. She is a professor of lingustics and social interaction, and has previously participated at OCHER in 2014. We are still working on confirming the second keynote speaker in the upcoming event. Also, please not that we have decided that the dates for OCHER 2017 will be January 11-13.

For the first time the European Association of Communication in Healthcare (EACH) arranges a summer event with several teaching and research workshops. Teaching workshops are on simulated patients and participant role-play, workplace-based communication skills teaching and learning, methods for teaching cross-cultural communication, and teaching shared decision making, conversation analysis in teaching end of life care, and approaches to faculty development. Research workshops are on VR-codes, qualitative clinical communication research, mixed methods, how to write a scientific article, PLA research methods, and medical education resarch related to communication in healthcare. See www.each.eu for more information.

The OCHER group just received the news that Marla Clayman, senior researcher at the American Institutes forResearch and adjunct associate professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine has been awarded a Fulbright scholarship. She plans to visit Gulbrandsen’s group at Akershus University Hospital from September 2015 to June 2016. This will be an important contribution to our research group, and we expect to develop interesting projects in our continuing efforts to understand information exchange and decision making in physician-patient encounters.

The week Feb 2-9, Pål Gulbrandsen is visiting a research group in Cologne to teach how to code videotapes with the Four Habits Coding Scheme, and how to teach the Four Habits to German GPs who also will get training in how to train other GPs. The Four Habits principles will be adjusted to needs presented in pre-visit focus groups. The project has received funding from the German Research Council. While he is there, Gulbrandsen will also run a workshop on shared decision making at the Cologne Center for Ethics, Rights, Economics and Social sciences of Health (CERES).

We have received funding for an 3- year PhD scholarship to conduct a study of consultations with multiple sclerosis patients, in which choice of long term treatment is an important issue. This task requires complex information procedures and discussions about treatment between physicians and patients. Please follow link to apply for the position. You will need to look for the position searching for these words: Ledig stilling som doktorgradsstipendiat ved Akershus universitetssykehus

The International Conference on Communication in Healthcare, which takes place in New Orleans October 25-28, 2015 has now posted key dates on its website. Deadline for abstracts is April 24. The abstract submission site opens on February 13. The conference is a must for people interested in communication issues in healthcare.

Please find here the final program of the 4th international workshop that will be held on January 14-16, 2015 at Lørenskog, Norway. The workshop is open for invited people only, and 49 participants are registered. Here the program: Detailed program 4th OCHER 2015

The program for the 4th international OCHER workshop is soon under way. We have participants from the US, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. The abstracts span a wide range of communication issues and methods, including shared decision-making challenges, conversation analytic and microanalytic approaches, studies on training issues, patient activation, and use of electronic support. 49 participants have registered. Due to the high number of participants, presenters will have only 35 minutes time slots.

For doctors with Spanish or German as their mother tongue, we have now posted new links to good resources in these languages. The Spanish link is to a group of Spanish doctors who organize communication skills training. The German link is to an 84-page Leitfaden (guide) to medical communication. The links are posted on the Resources part of our website.

The courses are held in March 2015, see Courses for details. tEACH is the teaching committee of the European Association for Communication in Healthcare. The tEACH Train the Trainers subgroup offers support and training for trainers and teachers of communication skills in health care across all professional groups. This support uses a skills-based and evidence-based approach to teaching communication skills. The aim is to help as wide a range of teachers as possible – so you’re invited whether you are a beginner trying to get started in your hospital, college, university, region or country or a more experienced teacher who is looking for help with teaching particular parts of your course. tEACH also aim to provide help across all the different types of healthcare teaching – for example medicine, nursing, midwifery, dentistry, physiotherapy and for undergraduate, postgraduate and practising clinician learners.